The Story of My Life eBook

among us. Many a burlesque quadrille I had with
Terriss and others in later days. On this occasion
Clayton suddenly found he was late in changing, and,
rushing upstairs to his dressing-room in a hurry, he
missed his footing and fell back on his head.
This made me very miserable, as I could not help feeling
that I was responsible. Soon afterwards I left
the stage for six years, without the slightest idea
of ever going back. I left it without regret.
And I was very happy, leading a quiet, domestic life
in the heart of the country. When my two children
were born, I thought of the stage less than ever.
They absorbed all my time, all my interest, all my
love.

IV

A SIX-YEAR VACATION

1868-1874

My disappearance from the stage must have been a heavy
blow to my father and mother, who had urged me to
return in 1866 and were quite certain that I had a
great future. For the first time for years they
had no child in the theater. Marion and Floss,
who were afterward to adopt the stage as a profession,
were still at school; Kate had married; and none of
their sons had shown any great aptitude for acting.
Fred, who was afterwards to do so well, was at this
time hardly out of petticoats.

Perhaps it was because I knew they would oppose me
that I left the stage quite quietly and secretly.
It seemed to outsiders natural, if regrettable, that
I should follow Kate’s example. But I was
troubling myself little about what people were thinking
and saying. “They are saying—­what
are they saying? Let them be saying!”

Then a dreadful thing happened. A body was found
in the river,—­the dead body of a young
woman very fair and slight and tall. Every one
thought that it was my body.

I had gone away without a word. No one knew where
I was. My own father identified the corpse, and
Floss and Marion, at their boarding-school, were put
into mourning. Then mother went. She kept
her head under the shock of the likeness, and bethought
her of “a strawberry mark upon my left arm.”
(Really I had one over my left knee.) That settled
it, for there was no such mark to be found upon the
poor corpse. It was just at this moment that
the news came to me in my country retreat that I had
been found dead, and I flew up to London to give ocular
proof to my poor distracted parents that I was alive.
Mother, who had been the only one not to identify
the drowned girl, confessed to me that she was so like
me that just for a second she, too, was deceived.
You see, they knew I had not been very happy since
my return to the stage, and when I went away without
a word, they were terribly anxious, and prepared to
believe the first bad tidings that came to hand.
It came in the shape of that most extraordinary likeness
between me and that poor soul who threw herself into
the river.